Steve Jobs’s Spaceship Apple HQ Delayed

Apple's plans to build the so-called "Spaceship HQ" won't be finished until 2016, a year later than the company had planned. Apple had hoped to break ground on the campus in 2012, but a required environmental impact report might not be completed until June of 2013, pushing the groundbreaking out to as late as early 2014.

Apple Rendering for its Planned Cupertino HQ

Bloomberg uncovered the news in an update to its proposal to the city of Cupertino filed on November 14th. The updated plans include more underground parking spaces, three times the amount of landscaped ground, and the removal of a footbridge over a creek in one corner of the property.

The filing also utilizes the same architectural renderings that captivated the world when Steve Jobs first proposed the building plans to the Cupertino City Council. There were no major changes to the building itself, and Cupertino hasn't asked for any specific changes.

Another View

“They could conceivably break ground in 2013, but only if everything goes smoothly,” Cupertino City Manager David Brandt told Bloomberg. The city plans on posting the update to its website after Thanksgiving, but only after it has beefed up its server capacity to handle the deluge of traffic the update will bring from Apple's fans around the world.

Apple wants the new campus to handle its growing U.S. workforce, which includes software and hardware engineers, designers, purchasing managers, attorneys, the small army of accountants needed to count all of its money, and all of the other folks needed to design the products it mostly builds in China and Taiwan.

No surprise there. It doesn’t matter who’s project it is they all seem to be too optimistic about the completion date.

D10:48 PM EST, Nov. 27th, 2012Guest

Definitely no surprise there. Experience shows that the council woman who, at SJ’s presentation asked if they would offer free WiFi, isn’t the only moocher in the city government. I did work for a brand new building in Cupertino recently and the city required my client to put up (and pay for) a large mural dedicated to the history of the city on the side of the building.

While this client doesn’t have as much pull as Apple, my guess is the city and other related entities will extort something else out of Apple before this is all said and done.

Rodney Dangerfield had it right when he schooled his professor describing REAL construction costs in ‘Back to School,’: you’ve got to “grease the politicians… and garbage collection, well, they aren’t the Boy Scouts…”